


under a sheet of rain in my heart (i dream of home)

by The_Blonde



Series: tumblr prompts [3]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-16 07:43:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13631787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blonde/pseuds/The_Blonde
Summary: "Dan feels like he represses a lot of memories of late, but not in the usual way that he tries to forget embarrassing videos or awkward things he’s said, repressed to the point that the idea of them falls straight through his fingers. A feeling of constantly missing something, getting to things late. Phil, sometimes, not just after waking up (because neither of them can cope with conversations then) but later, during breakfast, will say, hopefullyany dreams?and really meanany dreams about me?Phil’s dream journal is still a collection of poems about Dan, dreams about Dan, things Dan had read and felt guilty about. If he had a dream journal then it would be blank. Phil, hopefully, pleadingly, asking,any dreams?Dan always wants to sayyes. And they were all about you."Or: Dan is a law student. Or a vet. Or struggling through a degree that he doesn’t want. Maybe he's a Youtuber. Maybe he composes music. Sometimes he's in the 1920s. In all of these places he has dreams, even if he doesn’t remember them. In all of these places he is in love with Phil. It's just trying to work out which time is the right one.





	under a sheet of rain in my heart (i dream of home)

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely [colormehazelnut](http://www.colormehazelnut.tumblr.com) (and a few lovely anons!) who requested some dan pov from when you gonna realise. this should also be read as an additional chapter to that fic. i hope that you like it! <3
> 
> Title from "Daniel" by Bat For Lashes.

**\--6. phil lester--**

Dan, meeting Phil for the first time when it hadn’t really felt like the first time at all, had the strange sense of having found something that he thought he’d lost. That he’d been looking for Phil for a long time, days into months into years, and all of a sudden Phil had appeared and Dan had loved him. Dan sighed like there’d been a great deal of effort involved, more than the tweets and the comments and the Skype conversations, like there had been actual searching and that he’d already lost Phil a couple of times along the way. He maybe whispered this out loud and Phil, delighted, said, “You’re so weird,” as though Dan was the best person he’d ever met and that Dan’s weirdness was something to be proud of. But Phil says everything as though Dan’s the best person he’s ever met. Even now. Even when he’s just saying _will you make me a cup of tea_ or _I don’t think we should use that for the thumbnail_.

Dan wonders sometimes if his voice sounds the same when he speaks to Phil. It should but sometimes his voice is saying _soon, I promise soon_ and _I just don’t think the time’s right yet_ (and once _but everyone knows anyway_ ). He has a few different voices though - his younow voice, his stage voice, his gaming voice, his channel voice. Phil just has the one. 

Phil, grumbling next to him in sleep, pushes one hand against the row of pillows pressed to his side and the other against Dan’s cheek, fingertips seeking out the dimple. Dan smiles so it deepens. He knows this one. The coffee one. The mornings after it always involve Phil touching his thumbs to Dan’s face and nodding, like everything is exactly as it should be.

Dan taps his knuckles lightly to Phil’s temple. “Phil, wake up.”

Everything isn’t exactly as it should be though. Not really.

Phil, with some frowning and eyebrow raising, blinks awake. He says, “Here you are.”

Dan nods. “Here I am.” He pushes Phil’s fringe back. “The coffee one?”

“How did you know?”

“You were looking for my dimples.”

Phil yawns. “Always.”

“Do you need your notebook?”

“I don’t think much happened.” Phil looks halfway to drifting back to sleep before he says, “Do you like caramel macchiatos?”

“I drank nothing _but_ caramel macchiatos when we lived in Manchester,” Dan replies, confused. “They’re your favourite.”

**\--3. shadowy corners--**

There’s nothing in the satchel. His parents had bought it for him, with the ill fitting coat and the ill fitting suit, when he got the placement. The coat was for someone with much bigger shoulders, the suit was for someone shorter and the satchel was for someone who actually had papers to put inside it. Dan swings it emptily at his side and sometimes uses it to catch the doors of the tube if he’s running late. He also throws it onto the counter at Somers Town, a gentle thud of trying to catch Phil’s attention because he’s not quite ready to say it with words. _Phil, look at me_.

Phil has dark hair with red at his temples (something about this always strikes Dan, like someone pinching at his heart). He never needs the signal because he’s always already looking at Dan. 

Dan says, “Cara-”

“I know you hate them,” Phil interrupts. “You already told me.”

Dan hesitates with his hand outstretched. He’s forgotten to include the money so he’s, really, just standing with his hand reaching for Phil. He pulls it back to his side. “I did?”

“Here and also somewhere else.”

Phil talks about _somewhere else_ a lot. Multiple somewhere elses mixed with a whole assortment of other strange things that Dan doesn’t understand, asks Dan to wake him up as though waking up is like returning from a long journey, one that he wasn’t sure that he would make. The first time Dan had done so, the crook of his finger to Phil’s forehead, _Phil, wake up_ , Phil had blinked at him and looked like himself and also someone else. 

Dan had walked past Somers Town a hundred times. His life seemed an endless loop of walking up and down this same street until, one day, it was suddenly incredibly important that he finally go inside. He had felt like someone was calling him, a signal, a candle in a window, and then Phil, who he had never met before, writing **DAN** on a coffee cup. 

Phil knows lots of things he’s not supposed to know. He also doesn’t know where the coffee shop he works in is actually located and appears to have never been outside. He’s apparently scared of mirrors and says _I need a notebook_ with such urgency that Dan always finds one, appearing in the usually empty recesses of his satchel. He can’t make coffee. He drops things. His fingertips are looped with plasters and his apron is stained with chocolate. 

He’s the strangest and best person Dan has ever met. 

But then Dan tends to treat the best people he meets with some sort of fake nonchalance and awkwardness. He says, “Stop that,” when he means to say _Somewhere else where?_ and _Am I there with you?_

Phil still isn’t making Dan’s coffee. “Stop what?”

“Being all mysterious and confusing.”

Phil shrugs but his eyes are smiling. “I thought you liked it.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever said that.”

“Then I must have dreamt it.”

“Somewhere else?” Dan guesses. 

“Maybe.”

Phil has a lot of somewheres. This much Dan knows. Sometimes he frowns awake like he’d been to a place that he really didn’t want to leave. When Dan had walked in, the first time, he’d smiled at the copper caught at the roots of Phil’s hair and thought _hi Phil_ and _you need to re-dye your hair soon, you’re about to go full ginger_ and _what are you doing here? What are we doing here?_ A series of thoughts that startled him so much that they wouldn’t become words. He said, “Caramel macchiato?” instead, with his hand held out, wondering why this person he’d never met before didn’t seem to recognise him.

(He’d asked Phil, in the staff room, standing above the sofa while Phil tried to free himself from the blue-green-yellow of an extremely ugly blanket, “How can that be _right?_ ” A question that only received another question as its answer).

“Are you coming back?” Phil asks. “Later?”

Dan frowns. “There isn’t a later, it’s already gone five.”

Phil, as always, looks perturbed by the passing of time. “It is?”

“Haven’t you been working all day?”

“I’m not sure.” Phil taps at the stack of paper cups. “But it means you came back.”

“It’s sort of the entire basis of my day at the moment.” Phil stops tapping, looks at Dan. “Getting to the end of your shift. Coming back here. Seeing you. Have I said that before? Anywhere?”

“Not in those exact words,” Phil replies. “Can you-”

“Yes.”

“-Stay?” 

“Yes,” Dan repeats. 

Phil smiles crookedly and takes off his apron. Dan smiles back, watches the hesitation on Phil’s face (something about Dan’s smile bothers him, Dan wishes that he knew what it was, he would change it immediately). “You gave me something last time, do you remember?”

Dan is fairly sure he hasn’t given Phil anything, other than the occasional free cup of coffee. He _wants_ to give Phil lots of things, but none of those wishes have become reality yet. “From me? I don’t think so.”

“It’s-” Phil makes several complicated expressions at once, then pulls something from his pocket. “It was this. You gave it to me last time.”

It’s a square of blue card, the exact shade of the notebook that Dan had found in his own satchel when Phil asked for one, the same blue that he hesitates over when he sees it (on jackets, on files, in the sky, in the small flecks in Phil’s eyes), the blue he wants to gather up and keep. The card has been folded and refolded multiple times and, when Dan opens it up, is a wedding favour, thanking him for attending the joyous wedding of two people he doesn’t know. It looks handwritten and deliberately old fashioned. Dan turns it over to see a note scrawled across the back _is this a signal did it work don’t miss it_. “Their handwriting’s as bad as mine.”

Phil watches him read. “But it’s-”

“I like this colour blue though,” Dan interrupts, feeling suddenly guilty that he doesn’t recognise whatever he should be recognising. “I think- it’s not from me, I- I haven’t been to a wedding in ages. I don’t know anyone who’d invite me to a wedding.” He spins the card between his fingers and finishes with, “I don’t know many people at all,” lamely, sadly. Honestly. 

Phil’s eyes hesitate at the downturn of Dan’s mouth. “You know me.”

“I knew you,” Dan replies. “Before I even _knew_ you. Does that make sense?”

“To me it does. Probably not to anyone else.”

 _Who needs anyone else?_ Dan wants to say but he feels like he might have said too much already. He’s constantly doing that around Phil, wanting to grab his words from the air and pull them back before Phil hears. He doesn’t know why. Phil always hears and Phil always smiles, knowingly, as if every sigh Dan lets slip is a step closer to something. A destination only Phil knows. 

Dan isn’t sure how Phil can know the destination when the present seems so confusing to him, staring at the outside world like it had changed and clarifying _it does that sometimes, when I’m not expecting it_ , which was an utterly bizarre thing to say but Dan had felt _fond_ about it. His heart instantly whispered _Phil, you’re so weird_ and it echoed because it wasn’t the first time he’d thought it. They’ve met before. It’s the only way to explain any of it but Dan doesn’t know  where. 

He doesn’t know how he’d forgotten Phil. He doesn’t know how he’d found Phil and not kept hold of him. He doesn’t know how he’d met Phil and, apparently, decided to carry on without him. How he’d let Phil just slip through his mind.

“We could take another walk,” Phil says. He sounds awkward and Dan realises that the pause in conversation has gone on for longer than expected. He’s still stood at the counter, staring into space, while Phil has apparently cleared away the seating area. “Not outside. I’m not sure about going outside but upstairs? Maybe?”

The upstairs of the coffee shop is silver with borrowed moonlight and Phil trips on every step, trying to avoid obstacles that aren’t even there. Dan doesn’t trip. He knows his way, catching at Phil’s shirt sleeve and saying, “You have to be quiet, remember?” even though he doesn’t remember (Phil grumbles and says _But I can’t be. I told you_ ). The door of the mirror room is thrown wide open. Dan hesitates and says, “Do you-”

Phil shakes his head. “No.”

“They’re just-”

“ _No_.”

Dan looks through the doorway. One of the mirrors is now on the floor, smashed into pieces, so perfectly arranged that someone must have dropped it on purpose. The shards of glass are shining blue. “One of them’s broken. Look.”

Phil makes a pained little noise. “Broken?”

“Yeah.” Phil won’t look into the mirror room, much like last time, he looks everywhere except through the doorway. Or, rather, he looks at Dan. The same order that he always does; hair, mouth, cheeks, hands. Searchingly. Looking for something that isn’t there. Dan is still holding Phil’s sleeve when Phil’s gaze finally ends at his hands. He curls his fingers. Phil exhales. Dan says, “I’m sorry,” because he feels like he should.

Phil watches the fabric of his shirt catch under Dan’s fingertips. “For the mirror? Why? It was my fault.”

“Your fault?” They’re whispering. Dan doesn’t know why. 

“I rushed. I didn’t think it would happen.”

Dan repeats, “The _mirror_?”

“I don’t think I can fix it.”

“Are we still talking about the-”

“It’s not just the mirror,” Phil interrupts. “It’s everything else.”

They keep walking, right up to the fifth floor. Dan says _the servants’ quarters_ which makes Phil shiver under Dan’s hold. There are three rooms, presumably the attic, the ceilings too low for them, the entire space too small for them because it’s taken up with a huge piano. Dan, startled, gasps with a joy that he didn’t think he had in him anymore and squeezes Phil’s arm. “A piano! Did you know this was here?”

Phil says, “Yes and no,” because _of course_ he does, but Dan has already crossed the room, in two small steps, pulling Phil with him. “It’s probably out of tune, but-”

“It’s the only reason why I took these rooms,” Dan replies, the hand not holding Phil hovering over the keys. “Wait, I don’t know what I meant, I was just-”

“You can let go.” Phil taps Dan’s knuckles with his fingertip. “If you wanted to play.”

“I only want to do one of those things.”

Phil looks at Dan. Hair to mouth to cheeks to hands. Then back to hair. He reaches up and gently ruffles at Dan’s fringe. His hair is so overly straightened that the attempted waves don’t last very long. Phil huffs, a puff of air against Dan’s ear, and says, “I miss.”

Dan waits for what exactly Phil misses (frozen in the two steps of space between the door and piano, his hand on Phil’s sleeve, Phil touching his hair) but Phil never continues the thought. Dan says, “Tell me where we-”

Phil says, “Play me something.”

Dan does so. He hits a few flat notes because he downgraded touching Phil’s arm to linking their little fingers together, which makes it more difficult for him but makes Phil laugh, loud and delighted. There’s barely a recognisable tune, though there’s one in there trying to break out, but Phil still smiles like Dan’s playing Chopin. Dan, apologetically, says, “Sorry. This sounds like-”

“- something that plays when you visit a shop in Pokemon.”

Dan hits completely the wrong key. “Right. Sorry. I don’t play in front of- I haven’t played for a really long time.” Phil hums. “Actually, no, I don’t feel like that at all. With you. I don’t feel like it’s been a long time since- Where have we met? Can you tell me for real this time?”

“Here,” Phil replies. “We met right here.”

**\--2. the silence in between--**

The piano is white and possibly the most beautiful thing Dan has ever owned. He doesn’t deserve the piano. It’s impossible and covered in grey smudges of his fingerprints because even touching the pale marble of its surface leaves a mark. Dan has piled sheet music on the floor beside it, almost the same height as the bench seat, all with no music in. All filled with notes to himself. Every page ending in _why do you never remember, try and remember THIS_ in the messy scratches of his handwriting next to something, anything, that he can try to grab and hold, to take into the next day, the next- the next whatever this is.

He’d woken up in sequins, a black bomber jacket covered in them, and an odd feeling in his right earlobe that turns out to be a tiny hoop of an earring. He doesn’t know if it’s gold or silver, he doesn’t know what his hair looks like, he doesn’t know if he has freckles or dimples or whatever version of himself he’s trying to be right now. He has no way of knowing.

(he hopes the earring’s silver though. Just to continue the overall aesthetic of the look).

Phil is on his balcony, bumping into everything and making more noise than it should be possible for one person in a tiny space filled with plants to make. 

Dan thinks that if this is a dream, which it has to be, one of those lucid dreams that he’d thought he’d outgrown, then he really would have expected more drama. He and Phil on a medieval battlefield, on opposite sides of warfare. Dan would wear a cape and Phil would wear a crown. Storms and fights and a soaring soundtrack. Epic. Not this. A box sized flat with a too white piano and no mirrors (there’s something about the mirrors that he’s forgetting, _why do you never remember_ ). His subconscious is extremely disappointing, but Dan expects nothing less at this point. 

One of his sheet music scraps has _this isn’t the only one you know it isn’t_ , jumping up and falling down the scales. Dan knows this and doesn’t know it. The self that writes these things in the hour after he’s woken up is another person completely. He’d like to send himself a message and say _what the fuck are you even talking about_ , but sometimes there’s the odd note where he knows exactly what the fuck he’s even talking about and those are somewhere worse than the mysteries. 

Phil, on the balcony, sighs.

**\--4. way out of sync from the beginning--**

Dan wakes up to PJ standing over him (and halfway through a conversation that he’s only just realised Dan isn’t a part of). He’s ready to leave, his scarf and gloves both on, trying to wrestle his hat over his curls. When Dan blinks at him he smiles. The smile is close to genuine. Dan can tell because it’s not all the way dialled up, PJ’s smiles are usually blinding. Dan feels guilty that this one is not.

“You fell asleep at work,” PJ says. “You’re turning into Phil.”

Dan thinks _Phil_ (as he usually does) and then _Phil_. “He’s supposed to be-”

“Coming back?” PJ shakes his head. “Not yet. And that meerkat is absolutely faking his cold. If that’s even a thing that’s possible.”

“I don’t think he’s a regular meerkat,” Dan replies. “Phil left him here?”

“He probably fell asleep.” PJ’s tone is as unkind as it’s possible for him to get (which is really just vaguely sarcastic but Dan feels it and knows). “He just- he’s always- and now you’re doing the same thing.” The hint of unkindness breaks somewhere around jealousy, then circles back. “You should have said if you were feeling tired.”

“I wasn’t.” Dan sits up. He wasn’t tired, he was excited and happy because someone who isn’t his boyfriend had just told him that they loved him. He’d been thinking of how long it would be before Phil brought the other meerkats over, how he should be standing when Phil did. By the window, like he’d been waiting, or at his desk, like he’d been waiting but casually so. The desk had won because he could picture it, him looking up from under his fringe, Phil looking down from under his, and saying _I should have said it too. Earlier. I should have said it too_ because he’d loved Phil from the very first second that he saw him, so early that it almost seemed to have been _before_ he saw him. 

PJ is possibly right about Thor faking his cold. He seems fine until he notices Dan approach and then sneezes. Dan touches his head. PJ says, “I could take him back over.”

Thor turns his face into Dan’s palm. “No, I can, I’ve made us run late anyway, by falling asleep. I can finish up. You go home.”

PJ hesitates. His hat, finally on his head, is doing a poor job of covering his hair, there are already ringlets coming free. He smiles, again not genuine, not reaching the bright green of his eyes at all. Dan has spent a lot of time wishing that he loved him, it should be incredibly easy to love a person like PJ. “If you- I suppose that makes sense. I could, if- How long do you think you’ll be?”

“Walking him over to the enclosure?”

“Seeing Phil,” PJ says, and clarifies. “How long will you be seeing Phil?”

Dan asks, “What do you mean?” even though he knows exactly what PJ means. They’ve been doing this for a while, over the past few weeks, PJ saying things pointedly and Dan asking _what do you mean?_ He could say _what are you trying to ask me?_ but it’s not fair to make PJ be the one to say it, not for the first time.

“I’m not sure if the double date thing went well,” PJ answers a completely different question. “I spoke to Chris and he was really cagey, and he seemed to think that Phil’s already taken. I thought it had gone okay, when they left together.”

Dan can still see Phil and Chris, huddled in the doorway of the restaurant as he stared through the window of his taxi. By the time he’d gotten home he’d convinced himself of so many scenarios, a million different versions of how Phil and Chris’ night went from there, that they all seemed true. _PJ_ he wants to say. _I didn’t want the double date to go well. We were both there with the wrong people. You must be able to see that._. He says, “That’s a shame,” and means not a word of it.

PJ laughs. “Really?” He pats Dan’s arm and Thor growls. “I’ll see you later.”

Dan says, “Later,” after the door has closed behind him. Thor sighs and Dan runs his thumb over his ear. “Are you faking it?”

Thor chirps.

“It’s fine. I know what that’s like.”

**\--1. cancelled stamp--**

The wedding in Southwark Cathedral ranks pretty highly on Dan’s list of the most ridiculous weddings he’s covered. The ceremony itself goes on for five hours, with three different sermons, six hymns and a break for the bride to change into another dress. Dan falls asleep somewhere during hymn two and gets woken by someone on the groom’s side of the family shaking him by the shoulders. When he opens his notebook a whole waterfall of bluebell confetti cascades out. It scatters across the stone floor and he has to scoop it up in handfuls to throw over the happy couple when they finally make it through the arched doorway.

Everyone else’s confetti is perfect little horseshoes and hearts, floating on the breeze. Dan watches one of his crumpled torn blue scraps catch on the skirt of the second dress and writes _the bride wore three tiered lace which was only made more beautiful by the addition of clouds of ivory confetti. i fell asleep in the church. i’m not sure which one i went to but i feel something important was about to happen. the groom wore white satin, a bold choice. they only met three months ago, all of these couples seem to only be meeting three months ago. the bridesmaids held bouquets of white orchids and peonies_.

At the reception the groom (Dan’s forgotten his name) brings him a glass of sherry and a paper thin slice of cake. He says, “You’re writing a lot,” and nods down at the filled notebook pages. 

“It’s a beautiful wedding,” Dan replies, dutifully. He’s glad his handwriting is so terrible and disguises the fact that he’s really only written about five sentences about the actual day.

“They’re pretty much the same though, aren’t they? Weddings. I mean, I would imagine. Have you written about many?”

“A lot over the last few months.”

“Are you going to write anything about how quick it’s been?” Dan raises his eyebrows, the groom pulls at the snow white of his cravat. “She’s sensitive, about the speed. She doesn’t want people to be judgemental.”

“There’s nothing to judge.” Dan starts to wrap the cake in a piece of tissue paper, wondering if he can steal Phil more on his way out. “Most of the weddings I’ve covered have been the same.”

“It just felt right.”

“You don’t need to-”

“Like I’d _imagined_ her. Like I’d met her before. We didn’t even introduce ourselves, we already knew- don’t write that down. No one will understand it.”

Dan holds his hands up. “I won’t.”

He writes the actual article on a snow covered bench in Hyde Park, before walking it over to the office. He hadn’t used much from his actual notes, which had degenerated into _so much white, like the colour of the piano. they met three months ago and got married without having proper introductions. does that mean that they knew each other’s names did he write hers on a coffee cup_. They make no sense. You can’t write names onto coffee cups. 

The minuscule piece of cake crumbles in his pocket. The quest to get more had failed as the bride had positioned herself right in front of the dessert display. When she saw him she’d clapped her hands and said, “Dan! I can’t wait to be in the paper!” even though Dan hadn’t met her before the wedding, he’d only met her parents. She plucked a square of embossed paper from a little box beside her and added, “Here’s a card to say thank you for coming.” The card was blue, the only thing in the entire wedding that wasn’t white, every other card in the box was white. Dan frowned before he remembered his manners and accepted it from her. 

As he’d left she’d called, “You can talk about us in a liveshow!” and Dan had thought _I don’t do those so much anymore_ before saying, out loud, “Pardon?” but the door had already closed, separating them. 

His editor said, “Overuse of the word white. And also we need to stop getting couples that have only just met, there’s starting to be a theme.”

Dan replied, “I don’t think any of them have only just met,” and took the article to printing.

Phil, as promised, has left a candle in the window of his rooms. Dan doesn’t need it. He empties the sad crumbs of cake onto Phil and PJ’s tiny kitchen table as Phil says, “You found me,” trying to catch the icing. Later, he says,“You remembered where I was,” trying to catch the steady press of kisses that Dan leaves across his collarbones. 

“Remembered?” Dan shakes his head. His eyelashes flutter along Phil’s clavicle. “I never _forgot_.”

**\--3. shadowy corners--**

Phil says, “Did you write this?”

Dan stops playing. They’re back on the fifth floor, back at the piano, sat on the same bench seat. Phil takes up a lot of room, not physically but more with the expressive way that he speaks, the sheer weight of his presence next to Dan, even though there’s a few inches between them. The red in his hair is getting more noticeable, like it knew Dan liked it and so made an effort to multiply. The same way that Dan’s hair is getting more and more difficult to straighten. 

“This,” Phil adds, when Dan doesn’t respond (too busy following the streaks in his hair). “The Pokemon shop music. I don’t think I’ve ever asked.”

“I don’t know,” Dan says. “It’s not sad enough for me to have written it.”

“Maybe you wrote it when you were happy.”

“Then that would have been a while ago.”

Phil frowns. “Don’t say that.”

Dan instantly feels, again, like he’s revealed too much of himself and wants to take it back, to rewind the whole thing to the moment he came into the coffee shop and said _piano?_ instead of _caramel macchiato?_ He could have played Chopin or Beethoven and impressed Phil instead of the same tune that seems to be the only thing that comes out when he puts his hands on the keys. _Did_ he write it? He doesn’t know if he could ever have come up with something so light and hopeful.

Phil’s frown is full of concern and something else that Dan can’t place. He touches the lines between Phil’s eyebrows and says, “Sorry. Now I’ve made _you_ sad.”

“You never make me sad.”

“You don’t make me sad either.”

Phil touches the pad of his thumb, very deliberately, to one side of Dan’s mouth, and then the other, then the corners of his eyes, and smudging across the sweep of his cheekbones. The same places that he usually looks at, out of order. Dan leans into it. 

“What are you looking for?”

Phil stops. “Just some things that are missing.” He moves back to Dan’s cheeks. “Dimples. Here and also there. And your laughter lines, here. And your freckles, all across here. I’m not used to- I took so many photos, all of my photos are of- But you don’t remember.”

“I’ve never had any of those things,” Dan says, but wishes that he had, so much. Even just one dimple would do. He’d make one if he could, if it would make Phil happy. Is it possible to create a dimple? Maybe they just appear, tiny crescent moons, in the faces of people who smile a lot. If that’s the case then it’s not possible for Dan to ever have had them. “I think you’re trying to make me more interesting than I am.”

“ _I_ think you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”

Phil still has his thumb on Dan’s cheekbone, his fingertips somewhere at Dan’s jaw, catching on Dan’s exhale. Dan thinks _but when did we meet_. “Maybe if we’d met earlier than you could have talked me out of doing this useless Law degree. We could have worked in this coffee shop together.”

Phil says, “No, that’s not what we would have ended up doing,” with a huge amount of confidence. “We would have worked something out, together.”

Dan repeats, “Together?”

“I think so.”

“You sound very sure about that.”

“I’m not sure about much,” Phil says, “But I’m sure about you. You’re the only certain thing in any of this.”

“Any of _what_?”

**\--6. phil lester--**

It snows, whole mountain ranges of it across their balcony, flakes against the frames of Phil’s glasses when Dan throws a snowball at him. Phil isn’t wearing gloves and so any attempt to defend himself fail. Dan films a video but cuts it at four seconds (he doesn’t even realise that he does so. The editing out of everything after the moment it crosses to _too natural_. He could make an entire channel of deleted footage).

Phil watches him post the video to Instagram. “Will you send me the rest?”

He means _will you send me the real thing_. Dan says, “Of course.” 

Phil’s onto his second notebook, after a week of cramming lines onto the last few pages of the previous one. Dan flicked through it, from start to finish, and wondered how anyone could write this much about him. How someone could love him enough to spend all day and then all night with him. So many different versions of him.

“Which one do you think you lost?” he asks, reluctantly. To be jealous of yourself is a strange feeling but he’s managing it. Phil had mourned the loss of one of his dreams like a break-up (and Dan knows how Phil deals with _those_ ). He thinks it might be student him, he _hopes_ it’s student him, with his too long hair and his earrings and all of his half undone Abercrombie cardigans. Setting his sights on something, someone, and going after it. Filming himself from the best angles, knowing which corners of his room had the best lighting. Dan sometimes wishes he had an element of that still in him. He looks at photos and doesn’t recognise who that overly tanned teenager even _is_.

“I think the student one,” Phil says. “It’s been a few days and I haven’t- I don’t remember any of it. And I remember a lot of that one. You’re like you there. How you were.”

“I’m not like me in the others?”

“Yes and no. But that one, you were like you were when we met.” 

“Young and a bit obnoxious?”

“You were more than a bit obnoxious.”

Dan says, “Hey,” but it’s true, he really was. “That’s what got us here.”

Phil smiles, a slow unfurling, snowflakes melting from his fringe. “That and the fact that I loved you on sight. That probably helped.”

“It’s not lost. It might be _gone_ but it’s not lost. They were still- they were me and you, somehow, and you were dreaming it for a reason. Just because you’re not dreaming it anymore doesn’t mean it’s ended. They’re probably still happy somewhere, hot teacher you and emo fringe me. Maybe they just don’t need you to dream about them anymore. Were they happy in the last one you remember?”

“We. Not them or they, we. Were we happy in the last one.”

“Were we?” Dan asks. 

Phil says, “Yes. We were. I think I quit my job so I could be with you. Possibly. Or you quit uni because you wanted to be with me, I don’t remember.”

“I pretty much did that in real life.”

“Don’t say-”

“Well, no, it’s not fair to put that all on you but, uh, kind of. If I hadn’t met you then I absolutely would have done that miserable Law degree and been miserable on a placement somewhere and, I don’t know, walked the streets trying to look for someone like you.”

“You would have found me,” Phil says. “I think you always would have.”

Dan spends an hour building the pillow fort, making sure that it’s as tight as possible, no room for manervouring. He tucks himself into Phil’s side and stays there, Phil’s notebook just within reach. Phil falls asleep far quicker than he ever used to. Not that he’s ever been like Dan, up and pacing at 2am, but he’s generally always just taken a while to settle. Now he just places a hand on Dan’s side, reassured that he’s there, curls his fingers and _sleeps_. 

Dan says, “Night Phil,” and presses his open mouth to the space beneath Phil’s ear.

Phil, asleep, replies, “I wish that you were having them too.”

**\--4. way out of sync from the beginning--**

“This is a slight change in roles.” Dan wakes, Thor on his chest (not very comfortably, digging his claws into Dan’s sides), Phil standing over him. “I’m supposed to be the one that falls asleep in work.” He shifts one foot to the other. “I came to take Thor back. I think he’s pretending.” Thor makes an indignant chirp. “You _are_ , Thor. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

Dan’s phone is on the windowsill beside him. He’d fallen asleep with his feet propped up on the desk, the rest of him curled around Thor in his chair. He should check it but he feels too guilty, he knows it will be full of worried texts from PJ. Texts that he doesn’t deserve.

(Dan doesn’t love PJ. He tried, he really had, but if PJ asked, actually came out and said _do you love me?_ Dan would say _no. I really wanted to, but I don’t. I like you a lot, I like you so much, but I’ve loved Phil from the moment I saw him by the otter pool. I love him in all his threadbare sweaters. I love that he won’t put the smallest meerkat in the enclosure with the others. I love him_).

Phil isn’t an easy person to read. He looks and acts like he should be, but he’s not. Behind the hand gestures and the wide eyes he’s a closed book, a journal with writing that’s too small to read. Dan took notes. Dan watched and waited. There were little things that made him think, or hope, but then he got left at a party, his fingers still curled around the shadow where Phil’s knee had been, and then there was PJ, who isn’t a closed book at all. PJ looks at Dan like he’s proud of him, proud to be seen with him. Phil looks at Dan like he’s invented him, like he’s not sure if anyone else can actually see him, like Dan hung every star in the sky. 

Phil says, “Is it later yet?” When Dan doesn’t respond straight away he adds, “Because, you said, or we said, that-”

“I remember. It’s still the same day.”

“It _is?_ ” Phil looks confused by this fact but, when Dan smiles, he does too. 

“I never thought you’d say it. I didn’t know if it was true, I didn’t know if I was misreading signals because I was seeing what I _wanted_ to see, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry that I wasn’t more patient, but I’m terrible with that. Being patient. I should have waited and I didn’t. I’m the one who- You meant what you said, right? You haven’t come here to say-”

Phil looks amazed that Dan would even consider that this could be the case. “No. _No_. I meant it. All of it. You didn’t misread any signals. You’re reading all of them. I thought that you didn’t- I wasn’t sure, but then I woke up today knowing that I had to do tell you, like someone was whispering it to me. Does that sound weird?”

Dan, who hears a lot of whispering when he wakes up, but whispers he can’t catch or understand, says, “No it doesn’t not at all. It sounds weird that you _love_ me.”

“Why is that weird?”

“I just wanted you to. So badly. And you do.”

“I do.”

Thor chirps. Dan says, “I do too. From the first day, and pretty much every day after that. I’ll tell PJ, I’ll tell him tonight, I should never have- it was only because you left that party, and I thought, oh well he’s not interested and so I- this whole time. I should have been, _we_ could have been, it’s my fault.”

“I think it’s also a little bit my fault.” Phil steps forward, drops to his knees and raises his hand, every movement telegraphed. It’s a strange mirror image of the last time, when Dan had been the one kneeling, his forehead a breath away from touching the fabric of Phil’s jeans. “It’s probably-”

“It’s not. Not at all. I didn’t wait for long enough. It was only a party, it was only you leaving a _party_. But I didn’t wait.”

Phil smiles. “For once.”

“I don’t-”

“We usually spend a lot of time waiting for each other and looking for each other and searching for-”

“And finding each other,” Dan finishes. He gathers Thor into his arms. “Do we? There’s not many places to look here. And you’re not difficult to miss.”

Phil makes an astonished noise, far too much for what Dan has said, like he’s reacting to something else. Like he’s reacting to something that Dan didn’t say. All the things Dan hasn’t been saying. His hand, hovering in mid air, finally lands on the side of Dan’s face, the other planted firmly on Dan’s thigh. He says, “I asked you if you were happy with PJ, do you remember?”

“You’re saying this like I would actually forget anything about you. I remember everything.” Phil leans in. Dan watches his eyes close, the flash of blue-green-yellow, and says, “We can’t. Not until I tell PJ.” Phil nods, their foreheads brush together. “I haven’t been very fair to him.” And now, apparently, he’s fallen asleep in work when he’d said he’d be home ( _is it later yet?_ ). Dan’s phone buzzes, accusing. “I have to go and-” He passes Thor over to Phil. “But I’ll come back, you’ll be here?”

“I’m never anywhere else.” Phil lets Thor, no longer sneezing, bury himself in his sweater. He stands, still very close. “We’re back to later?”

“Later isn’t actually that far away,” Dan says. 

Phil puts his hand back where it had been, just above Dan’s knee, and pats like he’s keeping Dan in place (as if Dan could disappear or float away). “I don’t know. I’m not great with time.”

Dan’s phone buzzes again which makes Phil say, “Right, you have to,” and wave Thor’s tiny paw. “He says thank you for looking after him. Even though he was pretending.”

Dan waves back. Every part of him that Phil touched feels hot and tingling. When Phil leaves he looks at each of them in turn (face to thigh to cheeks to forehead) like there should be a mark, some proof that whatever just happening, whatever is _happening_ is actually real. But it’s just him.

**\--1. cancelled stamp--**

“I think we should both see Louise,” Phil says. They’re in Somers Town, reading Dan’s notebook, careful distance apart in the booth but still touching elbows. “You’re remembering more. That’s a good thing.” His tone is light, so airy that the words float, but Dan knows how happy he is about this fact. He’d whispered it, last night, into any space he could find on Dan’s skin _I’m glad you’re remembering, I’m glad it’s not just me, what do you think it means, do you think we’ve found each other here, is this the one?_

Dan isn’t sure about that last question. He’d like it to be, but he’s seen Phil’s notes, he’s _heard_ Phil. _The fifth one is the most important one_. The one Dan doesn’t have. Together. None of his notes relate to it, not even the slightest hint, and Phil is so protective of that one, so hesitant with the details, that Dan isn’t sure he’d notice if a hint appeared.

“I don’t know if _remembering_ is the right word.”

“I think you are.”

“I think you want me to be.”

Phil looks up from Dan’s awful handwriting. “I’m not going to pretend that’s not _partly_ the case, because I do, I really do, but it doesn’t change that you’ve-” He points at one sentence. “Here. The coffee cup. I never mentioned that.”

Dan says, “When I.” Phil raises his eyebrows, hopefully. “When I met you, I knew your name, like you said. I walked into your office and thought hello Phil, where have you been, and I felt like I’d been looking for you. I almost said here I am, because I knew you’d been looking for me too. But I was only just meeting you.”

“But you _weren’t_.” Phil shakes his head. “That wasn’t us meeting for the first time. At least, I don’t think it was. Because-”

“Because what?”

“Because when I met you I knew what your hair felt like,” Phil says. “I knew what it would be like to touch it because I knew that I’d done it before.”

Dan can think of nothing to say in reply and so says nothing until they’re at Louise’s lavender smelling rooms. Louise herself smells like roses and the two scents combined are almost too sickly for Dan to take. She cups his face in her hands and says, “He’s pretty!” followed by, “The boy from Zils Street.”

“Yes.”

“The boy with the mirrors.”

Dan feels himself frown. “Sorry?”

“Phil will explain that one. But for now he can sit outside.” Louise nods to Phil, who reluctantly folds himself into one of the floral armchairs in her sitting room. “With me please Daniel. Through the curtain.”

Dan pushes through what feels like several layers of scarlet drapery before he makes it into Louise’s parlour. Somehow she gets there before him and is already sat down at one side of a tiny oval table. Dan sits at the other side and says, “Thank you for seeing-”

“The boy from the dreams,” she says, adding to the list.

“I don’t know why everyone assumes that _I’m_ the one from the dreams.”

“What do you mean?”

“He could be from my dreams. That would make more sense, wouldn’t it?”

Louise, annoyingly, looks like this is exactly how she was expecting the conversation to go. “Would it?”

“I think it’s more likely that I’d dream of him than him dreaming of me.”

“He’s told you about the Zils Street job?”

“Most of it.” Dan pulls at the tablecloth, which is far too big for such a small table, and for someone as tall as him. It drapes into his lap. “Probably not all of it.”

“The man had a room full of mirrors.” Louise watches him as she speaks, tracking his reactions. “On the second floor, not your rooms I don’t think.” Dan shakes his head, no. “Mirrors covering the walls. They asked me what I thought, but they never take much notice of me, Phil and PJ. But I said there’s only two things to use that many mirrors for. Making wishes and changing your surroundings.”

Dan says, “Changing your surroundings?”

“Or making-”

“I don’t make wishes,” Dan interrupts. “What do you mean, changing your surroundings? Going somewhere that you want to be? Going _through_ the mirror? This doesn’t-”

“Or,” Louise says. “Going where things are different.”

“I haven’t been in a room full of mirrors. This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe not here.” Louise leans forward. “Think. Think about the weddings. All those couples, meeting here, exactly three months ago, getting married. Maybe they couldn’t do that somewhere else. Maybe they hide their affections somewhere else. Maybe they can’t fully be themselves, maybe-”

“Are you saying that all of those couples-” Dan stops. “I actually don’t know what you’re saying. That they wished to come here? _Here?_ ”

Louise leans back in her chair. “I’m just assuming. It is very picturesque here, isn’t it? Don’t you think?”

 _the bride wore three tiered lace which was only made more beautiful by the addition of clouds of ivory confetti. the groom wore white satin. they only met three months ago but he doesn’t want me to put this in the article. the wedding was everything you would want it to be and staged like it had been years in the planning. not three months. it was a wedding for people who had been waiting a long time_.

“I didn’t wish to come here,” Dan says, weakly. “I was already here.”

Louise tilts her head to one side. “Of course. You were already everywhere.”

When he goes back through the curtain, lavender cloud around his hair, Phil uncurls himself from the armchair and says, “Did it help?”

Dan, honestly, says, “I don’t know. Did I tell you, have I told you, that all the couples I’ve written about recently only met three months ago? Did I tell you that?”

“Maybe?”

“I don’t make wishes,” Dan says, for the second time, because it’s true. He doesn’t. He never has. There’s no logic in wishing, hoping for impossible, beautiful things that will never appear. He touches the brocade of the armchair, the back of his hand to Phil’s hair, the wooden panel of the wall behind him. All of these things are real. This place is real. He is real and Phil is real. 

But, if he _was_ going to wish for a impossible and beautiful thing it would be Phil.

Phil watches Dan pat the armchair. “She told you about the mirrors.”

“ _You_ should have told me about the mirrors.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t keep everything in order in my mind. I forget what I’ve said and what I haven’t said. And I don’t make wishes either, but I would have done, if I’d known you were a possibility.”

“You can’t just _say_ things like that.”

“I can,” Phil says. “Because they’re real.”

**\--6. phil lester--**

“Do you want to go back to the house?” Dan asks, the next morning, before Phil can say _any dreams?_ “I know it’s still snowing, but, if it’s important, if you think that it means something with all of this. We weren’t there for very long last time.”

Phil stirs his cereal back and forth. “We were there for a while the time before that. On the shoot. When we had-”

“The conversation. About getting a dog and trying to arrange getting people to look after it while we’re on tour and-”

“It wasn’t about that at all. You know it wasn’t.”

“Do you want to go back?”

“Stop deflecting.” Phil continues to stir. His cornflakes are almost soup. “You said it was too obvious and that we could get a sanctuary of dogs _one day_.”

“I meant it,” Dan says, hopelessly. “Are we going to keep stopping and restarting this conversation?”

“Yes. It never _ends_. It’s still going.”

(Dan hates arguments, hates any conversation that escalates, hates reminders of any areas where he and Phil aren’t on the same wavelength, like the universe is telling him _ha! You see? Nothing’s perfect_ when he wants them to be, so badly. Of the two of them, Phil is the realist, Phil knows what he wants and how to get there. Dan only knows what he _hopes_ and the worst case scenario if any of those things happen.

Dan said, “Are you okay?” in much the same tone that, weeks later, he will say _I don’t even remember anything except the dogs_ , falsely casual, the kind Phil sees straight through. Dan knew this but maybe he wanted Phil to see through him, wanted to be called out.

Phil, in front of one of the twentysomething mirrors in their dressing room, turned to look at Dan. His reflection caught some red in the roots of his hair. Dan blinked and it was gone. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t.” Dan looked at the floor, not to avoid looking at Phil but to avoid meeting his own eyes, twenty times over. “Why are there so many mirrors in here?”

“For selfies?” Phil shrugged. “I thought you would have taken at least thirty by now.”

“Hey,” Dan said. “I’ve taken ten.”

“There we go.”

“I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t- I know it’s hard, and I know that I’m taking longer than you, to get to that point, and-”

“We’re _at_ that point,” Phil interrupted. “We’re already there. Everyone knows, everyone can see it. It won’t be as big a deal as you think it is. I promise.”

Dan cleared his throat. “The important thing is-”

“ _We’re_ the important thing. You and me.”

“I wish,” Dan said, finally looking at twenty versions of himself, twenty versions of Phil. “That things were different. I really do.”)

**\--2. the silence in between--**

Or, possibly, he and Phil _in space_. With all the glittering blackness that Dan imagines it to be, kaleidoscopic and swirling from the window of whatever ship he’s docked on, because maybe he’s been there for a while and Phil is coming to rescue him. Maybe Dan can watch him approach. The solar system caught in Phil’s eyes. They could kiss in zero gravity and Dan could make a joke about being swept off his feet and all of this would be far better than  here.

Dan wakes in a poorly fitting suit with a huge coat thrown over the top. They both feel expensive, even if they’re two sizes too big, but a style he would never buy for himself. He frowns. 

Phil is still on the balcony. It’s as if someone has pressed the pause button, that Dan is still here, moving sadly around one room, while Phil remains frozen in place outside. It’s because Dan opened the doors. It was possibly too soon for that. 

They’re still open. Sheets of snow are blowing through, drifting across the wooden floorboards. It had been sunny earlier. Yesterday. Last week. Last month. Who knows. Phil, not wearing any gloves. Will you send me the rest. The real thing. 

Dan rolls some of it into a solid snowball and throws it out onto the balcony.

**\--3. shadowy corners--**

Dan says, “Caramel mach-”

Phil says, “Do you think we could repair the mirror?”

“The mirror?” Dan casts his mind back to the shards scattered across the floor. “I don’t know. It was in a lot of pieces.” Phil looks devastated. “I can get you another one, if you want, one exactly like that.”

“It won’t be exactly like that.” 

“It’s a mirror. Just a mirror.”

“Could we try?”

“I don’t think it’s going to be possible. And it would take forever.”

“I’ve got time.”

Dan thinks, of course you do. Phil has no understanding of time, never changes from day to day. He’s always right here, behind the counter, behind Dan on a flight of stairs, behind Dan at the front door, looking amazed by the fact that there was a whole other place outside. But Dan, sometimes, forgets that there’s another place outside. “There were, like, twenty other mirrors in that room.”

“But they’re not _that_ one. I didn’t think that I’d miss it, but I do, I really.”

“You _miss_ it?”

“It’s not.” Phil says. “It’s not just a mirror. I don’t think. I’m not sure yet.”

Dan writes his own name on one of the paper cups. He realises, after doing so, that he’s drawn the little crescent moon dimple underneath. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Neither do I,” Phil replies, sadly.

**\--1. cancelled stamp--**

Dan wakes up to Phil patting down the static curls of his hair, his nose pressed to the top of Dan’s neck. He says, “Welcome back,” instead of good morning. “Where have you been?”

Dan would love to be able to give an answer to that. “I don’t remember. Where have _you_ been?”

“I’ve lost one,” Phil says, by way of reply. “I don’t know how. But I’ve lost one.”

“ _We’ve_ lost one?” Dan asks. He tries to turn but Phil holds him in place. “Can I still dream it if you don’t? Is that how it works?”

“University. Twelve thirty until four. It’s gone.”

Dan finally maneuvers himself around. Phil is, as ever, too close and not close enough. They brush noses. Dan almost elbows him in the eye. “How can it be gone? Is that possible?” Dan feels protective of his dream selves that he doesn’t remember, gathering them close. “You never said that they could _go_.”

“I didn’t realise. I thought that maybe-”

“How many of them do you think there were in the first place?”

Phil says, “What?” and, “Oh my God. There could have been more. I never- There were so many mirrors, we could have-”

“Do they end when we’re happy?” Phil’s hand twitches on his waist. “That’s a good thing. That they’re happy. That we’re happy. That version. I don’t know how to word this.”

“I asked Louise about smashing the mirrors,” Phil says. “So that we could stay here.”

“But here is real.”

Phil shakes his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t- I’ve been noticing more things, and-”

“ _Here_ ,” Dan says. “Is _real_. I’d smash a thousand mirrors to prove that.” 

He has another wedding to prepare for, the worst part, the meeting of the couple beforehand, introducing himself and making small talk before he creeps around in the corners of their ceremony, making notes. He kisses Phil on his cheek, his temple, his chin, his mouth, the curve of neck just above his shirt collar. Phil touches each of these places afterwards and opens his mouth to say something that Dan interrupts with, “You’re real. I’m real.”

“I’m not disputing that _we’re_ real,” Phil says, and kisses Dan back (out of order; temple to neck to mouth to chin to cheek and back to mouth, a possessive seal of a kiss that Dan feels on the entire walk over to Piccadilly). “The time just not might be.”

Dan has never given much thought to time, only that there usually isn’t enough of it, not for someone who procrastinates as much as he does. He has never sat and counted days or counted months. He doesn’t ponder its nature and what it _means_. But he also never had anyone, or anything, that mattered enough to base his time around. His days were aimless, meaningless, creeping slowly into each other, until there was Phil. Phil is the centre of everything, it all bends and curves around Phil. Dan tells him so and Phil says _we can’t be the centre of each others’ everything_ but Dan thinks that they could. That they are.

“Everyone keeps thinking that you dreamed me,” Dan says, as they part at the train station. “No one ever wonders about the opposite.”

Phil puffs clouds of ice on each breath. “Are you? Wondering the opposite?”

Dan says, “Always,” opening his palm over Phil’s heart (he pretends, for any passers-by, that he’s patting out a crease in the fabric of Phil’s coat).

He meets the couple in the lobby of the Savoy. They’re both wearing purple, plum and lavender, and they recognise Dan instantly (he guesses by the cheapness of his suit). He feels horribly out of place and turns down their offer of champagne. He opens his notebook and says, “I just need some basics, like how you met and where, and-”

“Oh!” says the groom, grinning. “This is the thing, actually. It hasn’t been that long. You’ll never guess how-”

Dan sighs. “Three months?”

The groom doesn’t stop smiling. “How did you know?”

“It’s a theme.” Dan writes _three months_ in his notes. Underlines it twice.

**\--6. phil lester--**

They film a video and Dan says _I will find you in any world Phil_ without really meaning to. It’s the sort of thing that he says on the gaming channel, sometimes. There’ll be a hundred gif sets, a thousand video stills, but they’ll all miss Phil freezing, between one heartbeat and the next. Dan should edit it out, he usually would, but he leaves it in.

Phil, looking at the frames, says, “Really?”

Dan nods. “Really.”

Dan buys himself a notebook, a black moleskin, and optimistically puts it on his side of the bed. Phil whispers _Really?_ again and Dan says _Hopefully_.

“I’m going to think,” he tells Phil. “Really hard. About you.”

“You don’t do that anyway?”

“ _Obviously_ , but, like, differently now. I’m going to try and find you.” The pillow fort has been taken down. Not very neatly, Dan had just thrown all of the pillows from the bed to the floor while Phil watched. “I’m going to find you.”

Phil smiles. Dan kisses the upturning corners of his mouth, both sides. “Where?”

“Everywhere,” Dan replies. He catches Phil’s bottom lip between both of his. “In all of them.”

**\--3. shadowy corners--**

Phil says, “Caramel macchiato?” when Dan doesn’t say anything at all.

Dan says, “I’ll play the piano for you.”

Phil blinks. “Sorry?”

“You were sad, yesterday, last time. So, I’ll play for you. If you want. When I come back.”

Phil looks mystified. “What time is it now?”

“It’s morning. Like, really early morning.”

“So it’s not later?”

“No, it’ll be later, uh, _later_.” Being around Phil makes Dan say strange things, to feel strange things. Phil doesn’t make his coffee but smiles at him instead. Dan doesn’t even mind. “Why, are you waiting for something?”

Phil beams. “Always.”

Dan feels himself smile back. When he does Phil makes an utterly delighted noise and reaches over the counter, knocking quite possibly everything he could possibly bump over. Cakes and pastries and cups fly everywhere, but Phil doesn’t stop until he can press a fingertip to Dan’s cheek. Dan says, “What?”, already starting to blush.

“Your dimple!” Phil replies, as though this much should be obvious, and Dan’s satchel, swung over his shoulder, suddenly overflows with petals. Azure and cyan and turquoise and zaffre.

**\--2. the silence in between--**

Or maybe he and Phil as business rivals. In storm coloured suits glaring at each other across crowded boardrooms. They probably end up on a trip where they get snowed in, or there’s some kind of hotel room mixup, and then there’s only one bed. Oh no, what will they do. Dan’s read that one before, he thinks, and it would have been fun.

Or they have superpowers. Phil would use them for good and Dan would use them for, not bad things, but maybe he’d underestimate and get carried away. There would probably be a showdown on a rooftop and Phil would rain perfect crystals of snow from his fingertips and say _Dan, it doesn’t have to be like this_ and Dan would say _I know, but it was me. It was all me. I messed it up_.

**Author's Note:**

> (i'm on tumblr [here](http://www.leblonde.tumblr.com), come say hi!)


End file.
